Limits of Submission to Government, 4

Resistance to Tyrants
By Shawn Mathis

Bible Text: Romans 13

Preached on: Sunday, September 29, 2013

Meets at:
Chapel of SDA
2675 S. Downing (Yale & Downing)
Denver, CO 80210

Website: www.denverprovidence.org
Online Sermons: www.sermonaudio.com/denverprovidence

Class, a reminder of its usefulness, that it's not something that's far far away from us
several decades from now, even though it could be and probably likely is.

The Imprimis Magazine which I recommend, it's a free magazine you can get online, just
type in "imprimis magazine" and it will take you to the website and get it for free. It's a
monthly magazine which they condense speeches and talks from experts from various
fields in America. This is the April, 2013, "Religion and Public Life in America," by R.
R. Reynold. He talks about three ways in which progressives in America today are
choking religion in public life, pushing the idea, "Hey, you just stay in your little cubby
corner of America and stay out of politics as best as you can."

In 2005, the Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School had a problem
with one of its teachers and the teacher decided to take the problem to the courts, which is
contrary to biblical law, to Lutheran law, to Presbyterian law, etc. and the teacher is a
member of that body and so she was disciplined. She wasn't satisfied with that and
apparently went to court. The Obama administration in trying to defend that decision and
go after that Lutheran church and school for what they did to the teacher on religious
grounds in which she's part of and she covenanted to and bowed, argued that there should
not be ministerial exceptions; that they should be under the discrimination laws.

Now they lost in the Supreme Court. They just flat out lost. There wasn't a single
minority decision in their favor. Every judge said that's crazy, but who's to say that the
Supreme Court won't change in 40 years, and that's what gets to the next point, like
Obamacare, this is the administration, this are the lawyers that are already thinking that
way and these lawyers just have to get in the right position and have enough people to
like them and have enough other lawyers going to the schools, apparently teaching,
someone taught this somewhere, and they can become judges and then rule against the
Christians and go after ministerial exceptions, perhaps, and other things like that. So
Obamacare, as you know, is an issue right now through the courts with Hobby Lobby and
others because they're trying to argue, "We don't care if it's religious. You're not
technically part of a church and so you're still part of the secular and you must follow
these secular laws."

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And then Judge Walker, as you recall I mentioned that earlier in the class in the first day
when I went through a litany of things suggesting and pointing to increased legal
harassment, that's the word I'll use. I won't use persecution. We don't know persecution
yet in America. Legal harassment, even truncating our rights as they did in New Mexico
Supreme Court against the Christians in a photography business down there.

Then there was, in this case, a very helpful and illustrative issue of Bob Jones in the early
80's. They went to the Supreme Court because they had a law, their own ruling in their
own school was you can't have interracial dating and marriage. In this case, it would be
dating. They still had that in the early 80's and I think that's terrible, of course, but the
government thought it was so terrible it went to the Supreme Court and Bob Jones lost.
Think about the implications of that. They said, "You're an institution, you're not a
church, per se," so they are circumventing and making small the idea of religious
freedom to just being the church, not just Christians and their conscience wherever they
may be and in whatever business. So that itself in the rationale used.

The paper goes on and explains how one lawyer argued, gave a conclusion, excuse me,
didn't argue but gave a conclusion. I'm hard-pressed to find arguments whenever gay
rights and marriage clash with religious rights, who should win, in terms of religious or
gay rights. The person said, "I have a hard time giving the religious rights the winner. I
think the gay rights should win. I can't find a good argument to defend religious liberty
against gay liberty."

That's how some of the legal lawyers are thinking now, the professors are thinking now.
You have to be aware, brothers and sisters, this is a real issue and it's happening in our
time and it hasn't come to a head yet, but it may and so I think and I pray and I believe
this class can therefore be helpful if we just start thinking in these terms and start
instructing other Christians, and Christians knowing a knowledge of their own tradition
of resistance to government and the limits of obedience to the government, are very very
ignorant and I run across that.

This Friday, I went to a big Family Research counsel here in Colorado and they got two
or three other organizations on Friday to get a hold of the pastors and they'd do another
one on Saturday and they're trying to encourage us to take voting seriously, involvement
in politics seriously as Christians, and a lot of that was good but there were a number of
questionable assertions. Pastor Rafael Cruz, Senator Cruz's father, and the things he said
and the stories he related although, again, he had a number of good things to encourage
people, but take Christians in politics seriously. And we should, we have a long tradition
of that, unfortunately, I'm not sure if he's aware of it.

We are going to go over that tradition in this regards of the question of limits of
government. As you recall, I'm not covering everything in terms of limits of government,
just specifically how far, to what extent should we submit, and then when and where do
you draw the line of resistance and not just passive resistance but active resistance to the
government, even just war, even to the point of resistance to tyranny. You know, what is

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tyranny and the like? So I want to cover today a short history, Christian history. It's not
an exhaustive history. I'm not an expert on this. It's something I've studied this last
semester and over the years on the side on my own. I'll start with the Old Testament on
the history of just war, resistance and how Christians have been involved, and then the
next few weeks after this, I'll cover submission, how the Bible is very clear about
submission and how we're called to submit and how we can go a lot further even then
what we've done at times right now and even bring up scenarios in which for you to think
about, should I resist or should I be wise as a serpent and gentle as a dove, and determine
where to stand my ground elsewhere. Then after that, we'll also go over how the
Reformers from Calvin on into the 1600's up to John Milton and some of the
Covenanters, how they argued and defended just war, resistance to tyrants, so you can see
the rationale and the reasoning from the Bible from natural revelation, from logic upon
these grounds. And we'll also go over the texts and I'll go into more detailed exegetical
grounds for this position. Today, we have the Old Testament. We're going to cover New
Testament, Middle Ages, which we call pre-Reformation, and the Reformation period up
to the modern.

The Old Testament has examples of believers fighting in wars. Anybody remember any?
Yeah, of course, you could say Israel. Time before Israel? That's right, Abraham.
Remember him? Oh, that's right, Abraham. Abraham fights the five cities. He rescues
Lot. He made a pact with them, even, and they were unbelievers.

Now, of course, Israel comes along or God forms Israel out of Egypt. The origin of
freedom in this case, not only spiritual freedom but political freedom. They have
offensive battles where God says, "Go into Canaan and wipe out the enemy," and that's
given by God's positive command. As you recall, positive command is that which is a
special application of the law, like when you tell your children to go to bed at 7 at night.
There is nothing in the Bible that says, "Children, go to bed at 7 at night." It just says,
"Children, obey your parents." They make a particular law, in this case, and a positive
law that's not binding forever but only to the unique circumstances of a 7 year old. We
don't expect that of a 15 year old. That would be oppressive of a parent to do that,
although a child should still submit. There are worst oppressions than that, having to go
to bed at 7 o'clock.

That's a positive law and God gives a number of positive laws and commands in the
Bible that are no longer binding. They are unique. We're not called to be prophets and run
around eating food off of the heat of dung, right? Or taking off most of your clothes and
walking around; you know, all these incredible stories to make a graphic illustration that
God tells them to do, because God is talking to them. If God would talk to us today, we
would have to obey and the only way he talks, however, is through the Bible.

Now, there are defensive battles in the Bible. Not just offensive, "Take them out," but
they come after us, let's defend ourselves from the enemy, and that even happened at
times within Israel itself between the tribes.

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So the history of just war, self-defense and resistance to tyrants, starts all the way back to
the beginning of time, almost, and certainly the time of Abraham. It's divine history that
we know of in the Bible and the defensive battles of Israel, of course, a lot of those wars,
whether you want to call them defensive or offensive, certainly had a lot of religious
overtones and had issues of idolatry and the like.

Now, before the New Testament time period, we have the Maccabean revolt in which the
Jews got together and tried to overthrow Rome in Israel, and they succeeded for a short
period of time. You can't succeed, humanly speaking, against Rome very long and they
didn't. So that's the intertestamental period in which the Jews believed even without
having access to all their land rights and they don't have a kingdom anymore, they still
believed they had a divine right to resist what they felt was tyranny.

Now, during the time of Christ in the New Testament period, we don't have a lot of
details of their views. We have a lot of New Testament that tells us how to think
differently than how the Jews thought or how, more precisely, to think more fully than
what some of the Jews thought, as the Pharisees. We know in the New Testament, it's a
continuation of the Old, but also an expansion of the Old and a greater illumination of the
Old and it's not a special point for them to emphasize the idea of just war, resistance to
tyrants, any more than it's a special point to point out some particular moral laws that we
believe are wrong and wicked that are there otherwise by implication.

Now what's interesting, and we'll go over these texts later on, of course, is that Luke
22:36, for instance, Christ tells his disciples, "Let him who has no sword sell his mantle
and buy one." He's not saying, "Fight," he's saying, "Be prepared to have a fight,"
apparently; "I want you to buy a sword." Maybe he's thinking self-defense with respect to
bandits on the road like we have in the story of the Good Samaritan. That's probably at
minimal what he's thinking.

So he's saying, "Take prudent measures. Don't be presumptuous and think the Holy Spirit
is going to divinely protect you from a sword thrust." That has implications, doesn't it, in
how to answer this question of resistance to tyrants and just wars. At the same time,
Christ said, "Submit and turn the other cheek," in Matthew 5. How do you reconcile those
two? We'll talk about that a little later but I want to point out it's there in the Bible; it's
talked about to one degree or another, of course, to a greater degree in the Old Testament
and practice as well. And Peter and Paul, of course, in 1 Peter and in Romans 13, it says
very clearly we're supposed to submit to governing powers and the question is: what does
that mean? To what extent should one submit? Even to the point of him stealing your
wife? You start thinking in extreme cases and I think even some Christian pastors will
start realizing, "Well, maybe not that far. I guess we can do some resistance, that is, flee
perhaps." Even Christ himself said, "When it gets really bad, flee." Again, don't be
presumptuous and think the Holy Spirit is going to protect you divinely from a sword
thrust.

Now in the pre-Reformation period, we have at one time where thousands were
massacred by some armies. Theodosius the king wanted to go into the church after using

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the armies, in the 300's I believe, slaughtering thousands and massacring them. St.
Ambrose, the Bishop of Milan, forbade him to set foot into the church and required of
him full confession and penitence. Even the king, he said, must when he is terrible
enough, be punished by the church. Again, that's related to this question of jurisdictions,
resistance. This is a form of not resistance but an act of moral implications and rule over
the king saying, "You claim to be a Christian. You want to come into the church. You're
going to be disciplined by the church." Caesar cannot be claiming to be over God in
moral categories. God will judge them and we will judge the church as best we can.

Now properly speaking, the doctrine of just war was more or less systematically
explained by Augustine. I say more less than more. It's not fully fleshed out until the time
of Aquinas in official form and after that, the details and the logical rigor is even further
embedded in the Christian tradition, especially in the Calvinist branch or the Reformed
branch.

We have Augustine, around 400's, and I have a section here by Thomas Aquinas in his
book explaining Augustine and quoting him. Now, Augustine, of course, believes in
terms of just war and he actually asserted this. He says you can only have a just war if
you have just or proper authority. Not just anybody can go to war. It has to be for a just
cause or a righteous cause or a proper cause, not for petty reasons or reasons of revenge.
So the heart is important. Then you have to have the right intention. I just bled into that
idea. The passion for inflicting harm, the cruel thirst for vengeance, an unpacific and
relentless spirits, the fervor of revolt, the lust of power, and such like things, all these are
rightly condemned in war.

Now think about that. You have a Christian leader, Augustine, saying, "If we're going to
have war, we have to have it in a Christian manner. There has to be limits to war. You
can't just go off and fight whenever you feel like it." Which sounds very strange to some
people's ear when they misunderstand what Christianity is about or what it involves, they
may say, "Well, that's crazy. How can you talk about killing somebody, war, and then
doing it in a very civilized manner?" "Hello, sir, have you had a nice day today?" Stab.
You know? They want to mischaracterize it that way and, again, we'll cover more of that
later. I want you to know that the belief that there is a just war and a proper reason to go
to war is as far back at least to Augustine around 400 AD.

Another quote from Augustine here, one of his letters in here in Aquinas. "If the Christian
religion forbade war altogether, those who sought salutary advice in the Gospel would
rather have been counseled to cast aside their arms and to give up soldiering altogether.
On the contrary, there were told," this is in Luke 3:14, "'Do violence to no man and be
content with your pay.' If he commanded them to be content with their pay, he did not
forbid soldiering." This is the centurion, remember, coming to Jesus and saying, "What
shall I do?" And Jesus had to say, "Throw it all down. Give up. Why are you in the army?
That's crazy. You're preparing to kill people. You're actually going to kill people. You
probably did kill people." No, Jesus says, "Don't do unnecessary harm to other men if
you're content with your pay," not, "Throw down your arms and quit being a centurion."
That, itself, is significant and that argument is already made by men who are paying

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attention to the whole counsel of God and not just taking one Bible verse and ignoring
another.

He also says in another letter, "We do not seek peace in order to be at war, but we go to
war that we may have peace. Be peaceful, therefore, in warring, so that you may
vanquish those whom you war against, and bring them to the prosperity of peace." The
point of the war isn't to annihilate them, but to bring an end to hostility so that they will
be convinced finally through rational thought, instead of violent thought. "Let's stop
fighting. This is over with." That's significant and that's important in terms of why go to
war.

Now, several hundred years later, we have it at 1215 AD, the Magna Carta, the large
chart, that's what that is, from Latin, where they grabbed King John, who the barons and
the leaders of the land of England were tired of and what he did, and said, "We're going
to make you submit to a covenant, a national covenant, the Magna Carta. We're going to
write down some of our rights and things that you get to do and we get to do so we can
live in peace. You're still our king." However, Clause 61 of the Magna Carta says very
clearly if it gets bad enough and the king is not doing what he's supposed to do, this is
obviously not their words but mine, you can have a meeting of the barons to overrule the
king, and if need be, through force, by taking over the castle and other like things.

So, again, it's part of the practice and part of Christian history but, again, these beliefs
and doctrines and the systematic way of defending them finally comes to full fruition
during the Reformers' time. At the same time, that's the same time period of the Magna
Carta overall, you have Thomas Aquinas, one of the great early, medieval, Christian
thinkers, systematic thinkers. He, too, defends just war and even resistance to tyrants,
arguing in his, "Summary of Theology," that this is good and this is a proper thing to do,
and he goes to some of the same verses and quotes Augustine in defense of that. So it
predates, again, the Reformers.

Now, here we have in 1548, Luther is 1517, 1548, Charles V issued his infamous
Augsburg Interim which declared all the land of the Holy Roman Empire shall follow the
Council of Trent, be Catholic and act like a Catholic. So this is several decades after the
Reformation is going on and still promulgating back and forth and all this stress. It was
an attempt to smash the Protestant Reformation. While all of Protestant Germany
conformed to his decree, one city decided to take a stand and resist his authority, the city
of Magdeburg. The pastors of Magdeburg issued their confession, a defense of the
pastors and their ministers of the church of Magdeburg. On April 13, 1550 AD, five
months after issuing the confession, Charles V forces marched on Magdeburg, the people
of Magdeburg burned everything outside the city walls and closed the city gates and the
siege had begun and it lasted about a year and ended in a stalemate, but at the end of the
day by the early 1600's, they finally had the freedom they were seeking, essentially.
Charles V could not enforce such a rule among some of the cities, in this case this city.
They wrote a confession as I have here. No, I don't read Latin so I couldn't read the
confession. It gives rationales and it's from the Lutheran perspective at that time and it

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was one such perspective that encouraged Besa, the prodigy of Calvin, John Calvin in
Geneva, to write up and defend the views from his perspective.

Now, you also have other events going on during the tumultuous 1500's. It wasn't just
Luther. There were all these other places and countries, Zwingli in Geneva and parts of
Germany and Holland, saying, "Hey, we're Protestant. We don't want the Roman Catholic
rules." You recall, the Roman Catholics were very very closely wed to politics of the day
and the king and the rulership thereof, okay, in a way that Reformers are certainly
uncomfortable with and disagree and the doctrine of the sword, two swords theory, while
the Dutch wished to be liberated from Spain. Did you know that? In the 1500's. Yes,
some of the Dutchmen would know that. Spain was Roman Catholic. We've got Charles
V that's from that and running the Roman Empire at the time in some places there, and
they said, "No, enough of this. We're tired of you ruling over us and telling us to be
Roman Catholics. We're going to fight you." And they did and they gave some of the
reasons and they cast off, it was a long war, as I recall. I don't know, again, I'm not an
expert in history. I didn't go into all the details. There is so much to cover.

You also have the French wars. The St. Bartholomew's Day massacre that some of you
may recall where they went across France on the same night and slaughtered thousands
upon thousands and reports of tens of thousands of Protestant Christians, Reformed
Christians, in particular, the Huguenots being slaughtered by the Frenchmen and the
French leadership. They had a war for many years there as well. They also had lost.
France always stayed, always stayed Roman Catholic and the Huguenots were always
persecuted and they fled by the millions over the next hundred years.

Here we have in 1560, however, in Scotland as well where John Knox is resisting what
he believes to be religious tyranny, as well. They had put together a confession. In
chapter 14, the Scots Confession of 1560. "What works are reputed good before God?
We confess and acknowledge that God has given to man his holy law, in which not only
are forbidden all such works as displease and offend his godly Majesty, but also are
commanded all such as please him, and as he has promised to reward. And these works
are of two sorts: the one are done to the honour of God, the other to the profit of our
neighbours; and both have the revealed will of God for their assurance. To have one God;
to worship and honour him; to call upon him in all our troubles; to reverence his holy
name; to hear his word; to believe the same; to communicate with his holy sacraments,
are the works of the first table. To honour father, mother, princes, rulers, and superior
powers; to love them, to support them, yea, to obey their charges (not repugning to the
commandment of God); to save the lives of innocents; to repress tyranny; to defend the
oppressed; to keep our bodies clean and holy; to live in sobriety and temperance," and the
like.

These are the works commanded with ourselves and our neighbors and did you hear what
they said in there? Part of what they believed to be the second table of the law was to
save the lives of innocence, to repress tyranny and to defend the oppressed, right in the
Scots Confession of 1560. Because religion has nothing to do with politics. It doesn't
today because a lot of Christians in America, or at least religious people, have been

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taught that so long they believe it, it seems, according to statistics. But religion affects
politics because religion, specifically Christianity, says God is in charge of all things and
that includes politics and God has something to say about it. It's a moral law that's
required of us when we're involved in politics, as opposed to legal positivism which says
whatever law we make is moral. So whoever is in charge, therefore, makes the rules.
That's a lovely way to win and live.

Skipping ahead to the 1600's, you have the Larger Catechism confession 135 and 136.
135 says, "by just defense thereof against violence," is therefore under the sixth
commandment. It's part of, again, the Reformed tradition, in your case, the Puritans
themselves, and we'll cover some of that a little later, the rationale they used, the proof
texts they have. But it's built into our own confessions that there is a time and place for
self-defense, and that's that I uphold. I said I believe the Bible, I believe the confession is
the summary of the Bible, and so I have to teach this. I have to believe and I have to
encourage you guys to believe it. I can't always do that and that's fine. It's part of our
tradition, again, and we've acted upon it both in Scotland, Holland, and in France, and
they had other battles over in the east. I'm not an expert on. As well, Hungary and
Transylvania and the like. They have Reformed churches over there.

Now, this is interesting. I'm going to read this to you slowly here. This is very interesting
in a specialty paper journal, actually. It is "The Journal of Religious Ethics," volume 31,
number 1, Spring of 2003. You can get access to some of those expert scholarly works
now. Before you had to be a teacher at a college and have your credentials, now you can
get access to a number of them, ones I couldn't get before, specialty works by people who
have access to the original papers that I don't have.

Here he points out and this is very significant, "Under the Westphalian system," and that
was in the early 1600's. I forgot to write that down. I think it's 1646, that's in my head,
but you people out there can always Google that, the Peace of Westphalia where they
finally said, "We're tired of all the religious wars. Let's finally settle this in this law and
set down where the boundaries are in Europe and you're Protestant and we're Catholic
and that will be that."

"Under the Westphalian system, a ruler may claim the protection of sovereignty for
whatever he may do internal to his own society." I am the king, I have rule over my own
little area while in the position of Rome. "Thus Milosevic," many of you may remember
him in the 90's, "on his first appearance before the International Crime Criminal Tribunal
of the former Yugoslavia after his indictment, refused to recognize the court's authority
because he was head of the state when he committed the actions for which he was
indicted." Sufficient it be that I am ruler and I have sovereign rule over my territory. I can
make it Protestant or Roman Catholic. "By contrast, for medieval and early modern
thinkers, a ruler who abused the people under his charge the way Milosevic had been
charged with doing is not properly a sovereign at all but a tyrant." Laws transcend
society, then you can define a tyrant more consistently. Such a person enjoys no
protection of sovereignty and not only ought to be deposed, once you become a tyrant,

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you're no longer a leader. These are the old Reformers and early medieval period thought
patterns.

The second issue is who made dispose of such a ruler? The article continues, "As I have
argued above, the medieval early modern just war tradition, the sovereign's right to resort
to force to punish evildoers is not limited to evildoers within that sovereign's own
political community but includes evildoers wherever they may be found. That right
includes removal and punishment of tyrants in other political communities, but at the
same time, medieval and early modern political thought allowed for such removal and
punishment by others within the tyrant's own political community." In other words,
before the Westphaliam system existed, we already had established a thought pattern in
they called it the early modern era, which is still the Reformation and the post-
Reformation era, where you could define what a tyrant is and the lesser magistrates can
resist the tyrant even by force, and some theories, even the people themselves if it gets
bad enough can resist. They can grab a leader.

After the Westphalian system, you have sovereign states in a more modern sense, as
opposed to early modern sense, in which the leader says, "I'm a leader and if I'm given
the rules and I'm in charge, I can do it. People can't stop me."

Yes, ma'am? Yeah, you heard that, did you? My summary, that's what...he argues that. I
have not found specific defense of that other than I know the Reformers and, of course,
the leaders themselves reformed and listened to the pastors, they helped. They would
encourage others who were fighting against the Roman Catholic oppression. So, yes, he
had outside influences in some of those wars (unintelligible) by their own actions. Yeah,
that goes to the idea of what about today when America goes and tries to stop a tyrant
somewhere else?

Now, I went over the last few days, as you recall, the proper use of the law of God and if
you didn't fully see it, I'll make it clearer now: it's not so easy and clear that you just have
these rules, 1, 2, 3, you're done, it's circumstantial. Where is it? How serious is the
oppression? Is there a way to avoid bloodshed? And when you see here when I go
through some of this, the history of the Reformed thinkers, some of the writers will make
it very clear: do what you can to avoid war and fight and bloody. So just because there's
a tyrant, in other words, doesn't mean, "Hey, we get to go out." It's not a blank check and
he's not saying they believe there is a blank check, but it has to be carefully considered
and weighed: the circumstances; what's the cause; why are they being persecuted; what is
the persecution; what other options are there short of war, and there are a lot of options
short of war.

I'll give you one option if you're thinking of the Syrian war. It takes, as I recall, millions,
and I thought it was a lot more than that, millions and millions and millions of dollars to
move an aircraft carrier, just move it, support it and move it. Couldn't you take that
money and leave the boat sitting in the dock and just say, "Hey, we get across the border,
we'll give you $10,000 a family and you can go to Europe." You don't think that's a lot of
money for a Middle Eastern family? You don't think it's another way to avoid war? How

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much money does it cost to get an aircraft carrier over there, get the bombs and drop
them? We forget that.

It's not like there are no other options. There is another option than just saying, "We're
going to fight them because it's easy because we have technology." We have to think that
way. That's what Reformers think. That's the idea of a civilized war. In other words, war
is the last thing you want to do and I believe that with all my heart. It's the last thing you
want to do unless you're forced into a corner and, unfortunately, in international politics,
we'd like to think we're in corners when we're not. But people could disagree with me.

He continues on now here. "At the same time, the medieval, early, modern, political
thought allowed for such removal and punishment by others within the tyrant's own
political community." In other words, the people who were being tyrannized, they
believed, had a moral right under certain circumstances to say, "No, enough of this." The
thoughts and the ideas is traced to Calvin's allowance of the lesser magistrate may depose
a ruler who rules unjustly, and that's in his "Institutes" in the last book, in the last chapter.
But Aquinas already allowed the subject to depose a tyrannical ruler in his discussions for
sedition. I reference that, although I didn't read it. That's Question 42, section 2, answer 2.

So it was already there. It's part of our tradition and that's the battles in England had a lot
to do with this. What are the religious and moral rights to stand up against tyrants? Who
is a tyrant? Should we do this? There were, I recall reading one time, hundreds of
pamphlets defending the resistance against the king in the mid-1600's and the civil war in
England and Milton was one of them. Anybody know who John Milton is? What did he
write? "Paradise Lost," and? "Paradise Regained." Yeah. He was a Puritan, as it were. He
wasn't established, per se, although he's a Congregationalist and he wrote a number of
things and he wrote that wonderful poetry even the unbelievers believed, but he also
wrote a tract against the tyranny of kings. A lot of those Reformers, the Puritans in
particular, were like polymath, they just talked about all kinds of subjects, it seemed,
short of science so they are not really a true polymath, a social polymath, a psychological
polymath and a religious polymath, I suppose.

What you have, then, in Latin is two things here to summarize all this in a more
systematic fashion. Jus ad bellum and then 2, jus in bello. The first one is justification for
the hostility, and the second one is the idea of justice in the hostility, having a civilized
war. The reasons for the war, once you're in the war, how you operate in the war and
finally finish the war. That's part of our tradition. It's part of Western legal tradition,
which has a lot of religious roots to it. Religious in the sense that people thought it was
related to morality and belief in the Bible and God, not necessarily religious in the sense
that they can go to the Bible and find chapter and verse for every law. That's a careful
distinction there for anybody who happens to see this on YouTube and says, "Oh, those
crazy Christians want to make a theocracy." No, no, no, no, we believe in natural law but
we don't believe natural law contradicts the Bible. It's part of our tradition.

The modern. Now several centuries later, we have an international law. This is part of
why, part of the basis of the United Nations. Whatever nefarious means, purposes people

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have for using the United Nations, it certainly has a Christian background so far as they
take seriously the idea of international law rooted in natural law, at least traditionally they
did. I don't know about the last 100 years.

See, here are some of the questions they would ask to determine if the law is correct or
not. Is it a just cause? Is there a competent authority? Is there reasonable expectation of
success? Doesn't Christ say you're supposed to count the cost and not just blindly go into
something? Finally, have all the other means of peace been sought? Do not target... So
that's jus ad bellum, justification for hostility. I have butchered the Latin, I'm sure. Len is
back there cringing. Justification for hostility.

Now, justice in the hostility. Do not target civilians, and we just kind of take that for
granted today, at least in Christian circles. Use proportional and minimal force. They
come after you with a gun, don't nuke them. I'm serious. That's the Christian response.
You're just trying to stop the hostility, not perpetuate it and get them all upset so they
come after you with a nuke. I mean, that's foolish. Benefits must outweigh evils and
cease when objectives are accomplished and resume normal relations. Finally, have a
peace accord and go back to normal because that's your goal. Your goal isn't to wipe out
the enemy off the face of the earth like it is in some relationships. It's never been the
Christian goal and it's against the Christian goal and Christian belief. In other words, you
have war, you try to minimalize it as much as you can, keep it as short as possible
because war is a terrible thing. People just die. You can't stop killing civilians. It's just
going to happen. You shouldn't do it intentionally but there is chaos in a country when
you're under war. Civilians don't know where to go sometimes. You know, you see the
nice, pretty, red lines on the map on tv. "Oh, look. There's the line. You can see it." No,
no, no, no. That's not how war lines work, is this nice little picture on the map. In real life
it's chaos. There is no clear demarcation in a war. You get behind enemy lines to sneak
behind them on purpose and that's proper.

War is a terrible terrible thing. Even during the Revolutionary War, they thought it was a
right, just cause. They still cried out to God for mercy because it's a just cause but
through some terrible means as their own people are dying. The two are not contradictory
just because it's terrible in the effects of it. It doesn't mean what you're doing is not right.
When you discipline your children, it gets so bad you might kick them out of your house,
it's just and proper although the consequences are like, "I don't want them living on the
street." We do that a lot. We forget that. It's a moral contradiction. It's unfortunately the
way of discipline.

They believe, in fact, a number of the writers I read believed that war itself was a
punishment. It's a necessary punishment in some cases, that is, if it's a just war. You've
just got to do it and you've got to suffer the infliction but you're still trying to go for the
proper goal which is to stop the hostility, retain your life and your liberties.

Any questions? This is a short overview. I didn't cover a lot of things. I didn't go into a lot
of the writings necessarily. I'm going to go into that in the next cycle.

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Yes, ma'am? Well, I don't doubt that, although I couldn't prove it. I would have to find
them writing letters saying, "Let's start using the word 'gay' to undermine people." But it
would probably likely be the case. It's not relevant now. We're way beyond the use of
language when it comes to that issue now. I just read an article out of the Huffington
Post, "I am a transgender male, lover of men, and I'm going to explain why this is part of
my Christian belief." And he's a pastor at Azusa Seminary, a Christian college. What?

At the beginning of class, as I pointed out, these will fall under the categories of
discrimination. They're going to use these laws saying, "Oh, you want to fire this
professor?" Apparently a legal case is going on now with Azusa Pacific College or
Seminary, I forget which it is, over this. Well, hello? And what's interesting is
historically, this is a little teaser I suppose, let's see if you agree or not or think about it in
the future, I asked for scenarios in the future so we could talk about it, and part of this
would be practical in thinking about how to deal with it. How would you deal with a
Lutheran school that had a case thrown against them, in this case this college? The
college in this case I know isn't under a church. That school was, it was the Lutheran
Church and School. Think of the legal significance of that. For a long time we've
separated our seminaries from the churches they're serving for certain reasons, whether
principle or not. That may become the time that you don't want to do that anymore.

Westminster West is suing the government because of Obamacare. They might have been
able to get away with it not having to deal with Obamacare if they were under our
denomination formally. That has interesting legal implications and now you have to start
wondering, "Do I have a principle reason for keeping it separate or is it just an historical
reason?" Because if it's principle, then you're on your own, buddy. You've got to fight the
government and we can't take you into this denomination. So there are ways to get
around the system, is my point. We've got to be wise as serpents.

So let's go ahead and pray.

Our Father in heaven, we are thankful for the history and the providence that you've
given us that we can learn from them to think differently, Lord, even if we aren't fully
convinced of the reasons for just war, resistance to tyrants or how they applied them.
Nevertheless, Lord, you have given us the wisdom of the ages, Lord, as your Spirit has
worked through the church and may we, therefore, be encouraged to examine the Bible
in a new light, Lord, to challenge our thinking and be submissive to your will. In your
name we pray. Amen.

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